One of the most fascinating, and sometimes a little frustrating thing about observing wildlife is that no two days, even in the same location are ever the same. I know that, but I had to retrace yesterday’s steps in the hope of further sightings of a Dingy Skipper or two didn’t I?

Along the Woodland Trail, Speckled Woods seemed even more numerous than yesterday, and a little more willing to bask with open or partially open wings.

Speckled Wood and shadow

Leaving the shelter of the trees and entering the open meadow there was a fairly strong, cool breeze blowing – not the best of conditions for photographing butterflies that tend to stay low in the grass on such days, despite today’s sunshine. That didn’t deter me from stubbornly attempting to get some images of a lovely fresh male Common Blue. It was highly mobile, but during their frantic circuiting, these butterflies frequently return to the same spot to settle for a breather and luckily this was the case with this beauty; he favoured this particular grass stem or a nearby head of clover, so I waited there and eventually caught him during moments when the breeze briefly stilled. Not as sharp an image as I’d like, but a record.

Common Blue male upperside

Common Blue male underside

I wondered if I might see the little green jewel beetle again. Last night, looking for information about this species I read they favour yellow compositeae flowers and remembered there were a few hawkweed plants close to where I found it yesterday. Lo and behold, I found not just one there, but a mating pair. I’ve put in two images of them, one to show their real size and another enlarged one to show how beautiful they are.

Mating pair of Cryptocephalus aureolus

After a few minutes of photographing the obligingly oblivious pair I noticed a female Swollen-thighed Beetle -Oedemera nobilis (females don’t have the swollen thighs of the male) that had landed on a nearby flowerhead.

She decided to take a closer look at what the mating pair were up to. (Sorry about blurry image-swaying flower stem!)

I couldn’t resist this patch of pretty Common Daisies in the long grass.

A slight variation on yesterdays route took me up the track that comes out the other side of the hill. It was even breezier up there, but there were insects about taking advantage of the nectar and pollen on offer from the abundant wildflowers, mainly Rock-roses and clovers.

A Carder bumblebee in action on red and then white clover:

This side of the hill’s summit was looking beautiful, carpeted with sunshine yellow Rock-rose and Bird’s-foot Trefoil.

Summit carpeted with the sunshine yellow blooms of Rockroses and Bird’s-foot Trefoil (click on image to enlarge)

I stood still for a few minutes scanning the flowers for butterflies. Small Heaths were most numerous, but I did spot a single Dingy Skipper. Living up to its name, it was skipping around randomly at speed, too fast and mobile for a photograph, but at least I’d seen it. I had more luck with a lovely little iridescent green Forester Moth that landed on a Salad Burnet flowerhead and stayed there.

There are three similar species of Forester Moth in Britain that can be difficult to tell apart, but I think this one is a Cistus Forester-Adscita geryon. According to the Butterfly Conservation info: “This species is generally smaller than the Forester or Scarce Forester and the presence of good quantities of the Cistus Forester’s foodplant, Common Rock-rose, can be a useful indication of this species.”

Now for the ‘rare treat’! Since I came to live here, I have been looking out for a ‘Nationally Scarce’ plant that is recorded as growing here, the fascinating Nottingham Catchfly-Silene nutans. I’d only seen pictures and read about it, imagining I would find it in a rocky place on the cliffs or in bare ground. But, much to my amazement and delight, I found it today well-hidden amongst lush long grasses near the edge of a track. Getting my eye in, I saw there were several smaller clumps of the plant further back from the track edge, so clearly a good year for it. Difficult to photograph in the strong breeze, I’ve edited and sharpened my images a little so the plant is more visible than it was on the day!

Nottingham Catchfly amongst swaying long grasses

The plant is so-named because it was first found on the walls of Nottingham Castle. It no longer grows there as the site was destroyed during work done on the site in the 19th century. The flower remains the County Flower for Nottinghamshire though.

The plant is vespertine like many of the catchflies. This means that the flowers tend to stay closed in the daytime and open in the evening or at night, when they release a heavy scent into the evening air in order to attract night-flying insects and moths.

Flowers are drooping, in very open clusters and all usually pointing one way. Petals white above, greenish or pinkish beneath.

Each flower opens over three successive nights revealing one whorl of stamens on the first night and another on the second and the styles on the third. This is thought to prevent self fertilisation.

Moving on up to the summit I found my first Pyramidal Orchid of the year, still tightly in bud.

The North Wales Wildlife Trust reserve at Bryn Pydew is becoming one of my new favourite places to visit, especially to see some of our less-common wildflowers and a variety of insects.

The first thing to attract my attention today was a Small Heath butterfly. Fluttering along low to the ground it kept disappearing from my sight as it landed amongst the stems of long grass, but I managed to follow it along the woodland edge for a short way until I was distracted by the corpse of a little shrew. It didn’t appear to have been there for long, but there were puncture wounds around its back so had clearly been caught by something with sharp teeth and the fact that it had not been eaten suggests a domestic cat; they don’t like the taste of shrew and often leave their victims lying at the side of paths etc.

Common Shrew – Sorex araneus Welsh: Llyg Cyffredin

British shrews are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and it is an offence to kill them without a special licence.

Description: As with all shrews, the common shrew has a long, flexible snout, small eyes and tiny ears. They have dark brown fur on their backs, paler sides and an even paler underside. Their heads are not as domed in shape as that of the even smaller pygmy shrew and the tail is proportionately shorter than that of the smaller species.

Food: All shrews have voracious appetites; they need to feed every 2-3 hours and consume up to 90% of their body weight in any 24 hour period. They eat most terrestrial insects, but also take worms, slugs and snails; they have a good sense of smell and feeling, but they do not dig for their prey.They lack the fat reserves to see them though the winter so do not hibernate and can be seen all year round. Apart from those killed by cats, shrew corpses may also be those of animals that have not been able to find enough food.

Behaviour: They are solitary, territorial animals and often fight when they come into contact with their neighbours. The high pitched squeaking sound that they make can often be heard as you walk along footpaths; they are most active at night and during dawn and dusk and intersperse periods of intense activity with resting.

Reproduction

Shrews build nests below the ground or under dense vegetation. After a gestation period of 22-25 days, females give birth to 4-7 young, which are weaned after 22 days. They breed from April to October, with a peak in the summer.

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I lost the butterfly but was soon compensated with a lovely bright metallic green beetle rummaging around in the stamens of a Welsh poppy.

Oedemera nobilis feeding on pollen

This was the first, rather hasty photograph I took of the handsome beetle and followed it with a number of what I thought would be much better shots, but when I downloaded the day’s bounty I discovered all of them were unreadable, so goodness knows what happened there. Hopefully I will find more another day.

Dog Rose- Rosa canina

The open patch of ground just inside the site boundary is lovely now, lush with a mix of tall meadow grasses swaying gently in the day’s light breeze and catching the sunlight. Dog rose shrubs are in glorious full bloom.

A lush display of tall meadow grasses

In a sunny patch of shorter turf where there was Red Clover and Bird’s-foot Trefoil growing I stopped to watch Common Blue and Brown Argus butterflies and bumblebees. Both species of butterfly are territorial despite their tiny size and were chasing off anything and everything that dared enter their airspace.

A Common Blue male taking off from Bird’s-foot Trefoil

Brown Argus

Common Carder Bee on red clover

There’s not much to see in the woodland here, the trees, including a good number of yews grow closely together, shutting out much of the sunlight, so it is very dark and quiet in there. I did spot a young Wren demanding attention from a parent though, calling loudly and flapping its wings wildly to try to maintain its balance on a fence post. It is only a short downhill walk to take before reaching the open area of Limestone Pavement. It’s a little more overgrown now than the last time I saw it, with quite a few tree saplings and brambles getting a foothold. I know little or nothing about how you would go about maintaining a limestone pavement though, so have no idea what would be removed, or when, but there are some lovely wildflowers here currently and it would be a shame if they were smothered by brambles.

The main expanse of Limestone Pavement

Common Rockrose

There is quite a bit of rockrose, interspersed with salad burnet with its curious flowerheads.

Salad Burnet– Sanguisorba minor is a low-growing herb of chalk and limestone grasslands which produces rounded, reddish flower heads from May to September. The leaves of Salad Burnet comprise up to 12 pairs of rounded, toothed leaflets, and form a rosette at the base of the flower stem. The rounded flower heads are reddish and speckled.

Salad Burnet flower

The leaves are famous for smelling of cucumber if crushed or walked upon, and this plant lives up to its name as a popular addition to salads and summer drinks.

The leaves of Salad Burnet comprise up to 12 pairs of rounded, toothed leaflets, and form a rosette at the base of the flower stem.

I try not to plan my outings too much, preferring to take things as they come at the time, but I was hoping to find one of this site’s ‘special’ plants in flower today. Dropwort-filipendula vulgaris is a clumsy (pardon the pun) name for a very elegant and rather ‘frothy’ plant. I found a couple of stems at the end of their flowering late last summer, but hoped to find more today. I was pleased then to find the first ones, which I recognised by the pretty fern-like leaves, but alas the flowers were still tightly budded. Once I had spotted one I found more, but all were tightly closed.

Dropwort in bud

Again there was compensation for not finding what I was hoping for; this time it was Bloody Cranesbill –Geranium Sanguinem, which is not at all a common plant and in Wales restricted to a few limestone-rich coastal areas. It grows also on the Great Orme, a few miles away in Llandudno and I have also seen it on Llanddwyn Island in Anglesey.

Bloody Cranesbill-Geranium sanguinem growing in a ‘gryke’ of the limestone pavement

There are many colour variations of this plant species, but it takes the ‘Bloody’ part of its name from the blood-red sepals that remain after the petals have fallen.

Broad-leaved Willowherb, one of the more ‘ordinary’ wildflowers to be found here

Wood Avens

Leaving this main area of the limestone pavement and continuing downhill through a narrow belt of woodland you emerge into an open grassy area that is so pretty I was half-expecting Bambi and friends to pop out. There were a few Purple Spotted Orchids here, very nearly finished, an impressive group of Bloody Cranesbill and more Rockroses.

At the far end of this small woodland glade is another smaller section of pavement, which is where I found the Dropwort last year. There was no sign of the plant in the exact same place, but I did spot a couple of little pale pink orchids. Once again, as I got my eye in, I found more of them, most not quite fully out yet.

Heath-spotted Orchid- Dactylorhiza maculata

I sat in the sunshine on the edge of the rocky pavement for a while, admiring the view across to Penrhyn Bay and watching more Small Heath butterflies fluttering over the stony ground where they settled to bask occasionally. I realised then that the reason I was finding it difficult to spot them earlier was because they settle very low to the ground, almost horizontal to it. As I got up to leave one fluttered along the grass in front of me, settling some metres ahead, so I took a series of photographs as I inched towards it, each one a little closer. It allowed me to get very close before flying off from here.

Small Heath – Coenonympha pamphilus

Quite unexpectedly then, just a short distance away from the butterfly I glanced up to see the flower I was hoping for in peachy pink and creamy white frothy glory. A Dropwort in almost full glorious bloom. What a treat.

Dropwort in full peaches and cream frothy glory

Dropwort (Filipendula vulgaris), also known as Fern-leaf Dropwort, is a perennial herb of the family Rosaceae and closely related to Meadowsweet. It is found in dry pastures across much of Europe and central and northern Asia, preferring full sun to partial shade and is more tolerant of dry conditions than most other members of its genus.

It has finely-cut, radical leaves, fern-like in appearance, and an erect stem 20–50 centimetres (8–20 in) tall. The tiny creamy white flowers appear in dense clusters from late spring to mid summer. The crushed leaves and roots have a scent of oil of wintergreen (Methyl salicylate).

The last day of May was overcast and cool but I wanted to go back to the Bryn to photograph a plant I had spotted there on the rocky cliffs amongst the rockroses but forgot about until I got home. I took a different route up to the top today, passing through the grassy meadow area to see what I could find there.

Cow parsley -Anthriscus sylvestris

A first bloom of Common Vetch-Vicia sativa

There’s a lot of Ribwort Plantain, whose flowerheads I find fascinating, every one seems slightly different to the other.

Ribwort Plantain flowerhead

The star of the flower show today was definitely the May, the blossom of the Hawthorn. Perhaps we can all ‘cast a clout’, now that May is out, both the blossom and the month.

A beautiful spray of May blossom, or Hawthorn, looks like a bridal bouquet

Close to where I stopped to photograph the May blossom I noticed the more unusual Salad Burnet plant. This is one of those plants that is very easy to overlook as it seems to really blend in to its surroundings, but once you have it in your mind’s eye you then notice them in other places.

Salad Burnet-Sanguisorba minor

The leaves are very pretty, and as the plant’s name suggests, are edible.

Salad Burnet has very pretty, pinnate leaves

The Oak trees are fresh-coloured and in just about full leaf now.

Oak tree

Fresh new oak leaves

On a rocky outcrop there were low-growing common rockroses, bird’s foot trefoil, kidney vetch, almost over but attracting the attention of a number of little ginger-headed bumblebees, small patches of wild thyme and taller-growing hawksbit flowers.

Wild Thyme growing with Common Rockrose

I wasn’t able to get a particularly good photograph of a bee, but I liked the lichen-covered rock in this one.

A small ginger bumblebee on Kidney Vetch

The patch of bird’s-foot trefoil had obligingly placed itself near the edge of a rock, so taking an eye-level picture was a nice option. I didn’t notice the ‘Cuckoo-spit’ until I looked at the photograph. I’d forgotten about Cuckoo-spit. I must remind myself what generates it, some kind of thrip, I think.

Bird’s-foot Trefoil with Cuckoo Spit

Hawksbit against limestone rock

There seem to be masses of the beautiful blue Germander Speedwell here this year, I don’t remember it being this prolific before.

Germander Speedwell-Veronica chamaedrys

I finally got up and around to where the plant I had come to find was located; probably not as exciting as you’d expected, but I was pleased to find it. The plant is Hairy Rock Cress, an under-stated little plant with tiny white flowers like most members of the cress family, not at all showy like its golden-bloomed neighbours, but none the less interesting. Even though it’s flower’s are almost over and it’s going to seed.

The scientific name for Rockrose, helianthemum, means sun-flower. They don’t bother to open up on dull or damp days, particularly the little blooms of the Hoary Rockrose.

Flowers of Hoary Rockrose close on dull, sunless days

It was getting quite late on now, but there was one more distraction to waylay me before heading back down the hill. A Mistle Thrush was out hunting on the path around the edge of the rocks, which I had to stay and watch as I’d not seen one here before. When it flew off with its gatherings I took a photograph of the top of a lovely Ash tree which has houses of Rhos-on-Sea below and peeking through its leaves.

Ash tree on Bryn Euryn, Rhos-on-Sea behind

On the way down through the woods I spotted some very pretty Oak Moss lichen hanging from some twiggy branches; I don’t know why I’ve not noticed it before, there’s quite a lot of it.

Oak Moss lichen- Usnea florida

Almost at the bottom of the hill, I couldn’t resist taking a final picture of a Buff-tailed Bumblebee that was either excavating a hole or looking for an existing one to spend the night in.